BlackBerry’s Open Letter Deja Vu

Since taking over as BlackBerry’s interim chief executive last month, John Chen has provided few details about how he plans to turn the struggling smartphone-maker around.

On Monday the public got a glimpse, and it may look familiar.

In an open letter to BlackBerry customers, Chen said the company is “very much alive, thank you,” and that it’s “going back to [its] heritage and roots.”

When Chen’s appointment was announced, many analysts and investors speculated that one of the first things Chen would do is look for a way to exit the smartphone business. Sales of BlackBerrys, after all, have been declining for several consecutive quarters and the company’s newest line of phones flopped, leaving it with about $1 billion in unsold inventory.

In the letter, published on BlackBerry’s official blog, Chen said the company is still committed to handsets, which will be one of four areas of focus. The others include business-focused software solutions, its BlackBerry Messenger application, and what it calls “embedded systems.”

“We know that BlackBerry devices are not for everyone,” Chen writes. “That’s ok.”

If all this sounds familiar, that’s because BlackBerry issued a similar open letter in October, in which it said: “Yes, there is a lot of competition out there and we know that BlackBerry is not for everyone. That’s OK.”

The earlier letter also highlighted the company’s focus on security and solutions for businesses and government agencies.

Chen has been visiting key customers in recent weeks, with a main focus on government agencies, according to a person familiar with the matter. He’s also reworked the executive ranks at the Waterloo, Ontario-based company. Last month the company announced the departure of three key executives and a longtime board member.

But how exactly his path forward differs from that of his predecessor, Thorsten Heins, remains to be seen.